Did I ever tell you?

Did I ever tell you that I didn’t start out with any particular aim or wish to become a Feldenkrais® trainer?

In 1988, Dennis Leri and Elizabeth Berringer started the Somathematics training. It met during the summer months in a gymnasium at Sonoma State University, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of San Francisco. That was during the middle of my master’s program in Cybernetic Systems at San Jose State University (SJSU) and when I was studying intensely with Heinz von Foerster, who had been in on the founding of the field along with Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, and John von Neumann. 

From the moment we’d met, Heinz had taken me under his wing. While I may have been taking classes at SJSU, I was studying with him. I would give him all the assignments and papers for my academic classes; they served as the basis for our regular meetings at his house on Rattlesnake Hill in Pescadero. Along with the assignments he gave me, the conferences we attended, and social time we spent together, these were the means whereby Heinz orchestrated my individual, rigorous, and heartfelt tutelage in cybernetics and epistemology. And they were his way of inducting me into the Wittgenstein world. (Sorry, I digress; more on this another time. )

Much to my surprise — and delight — it turned out that Heinz knew Moshe . . . and that he was interested in the Method. He had visited the San Francisco training, where he and Moshe had a deep and friendly collegial conversation in front of the class. (The transcript of this conversation was published in the 1977 edition of the Feldenkrais Journal of the Feldenkrais Guild® of North America.) 

As it happened both Elizabeth and Dennis attended the San Francisco training. When they invited Heinz to give a series of lectures to the Somathematic trainees over a few days, he happily accepted. 

Heinz was 88 at the time so I was his driver. I picked him up at his home an hour south of San Francisco and drove him to Sonoma State University (SSU), about an hour north of SF. Each day he lectured, I picked him up at the bed and breakfast inn where he stayed, took him to the talks at SSU and brought him back at the end of day. During the day, I’d also chauffeur him to meetings and meals, all of which I also took part in. When the talks were done, I drove him all the way back home, taking scenic Highway One along the Pacific Coast from San Fran to Pescadero. (In case you’re wondering, I was about to turn 30 at the time.)

I had been at the training before, from the very first day in fact. That was five years after I’d graduated from the Amherst training and it was my first time back in this setting, this learning laboratory and crucible. My first time to lie on the floor with fellow somanauts* for one day after the other. My first time to be led through a series of Awareness Through Movement® (ATM®) lessons and to be taught more about giving Functional Integration® (FI®) lessons by the artful and compassionate Gaby Yaron. This was also my first time giving FIs to trainees in a teacher training program during their training. 

My trip with Heinz was also an entirely different kind of first time experience. That’s because that was my first time behind the scenes at a training. I was hanging out with the trainers and the invited guest, a man as important to me as Moshe and as close as my grandfathers. Not only did I attend his lectures and hang out with Heinz between them, but reflected on them with him and Elizabeth, Dennis (with whom I’d been meeting regularly with also), and the other members of the faculty. At the end of the day, it was just us together in the car, he debriefed each talk with me. We discussed it in relation to everything I studied with him: the training he’d given as part of the est trainer’s training, the papers he’d written, and, most significantly, in relation to the work of other cyberneticians, scientists, and psycho- and group therapists, including that of his students and co-conspirators, Humberto Maturana and Francesco Varela. 

In this way, Heinz let me in on his perspective as a teacher. That experience, along with the insight from conversations with Elisabeth and Dennis, made it possible for me to see what I hadn’t considered before: the training from the trainer’s point of view. 

Once that vista opened, I couldn’t imagine my world without it. I’d been enchanted, inspired, and changed by the conversations I’d witnessed and even dared to participate in.